It's never too late to stop, start, or change.

In 2014 my husband, David Dobson, and I left our home in the UK and moved to San Francisco as part of my role as, then, Chief Learning & Culture Officer at Essence Global in order to be better placed to support the agency’s global growth plans.

Initially the plan was to come to the US for just two years, even so it was not the easiest of decisions for many reasons. One of those reasons was that it would mean winding down my private practice as a registered neuro-linguistic psychotherapist. 

Two years led to three, three led to four, and four led to a green card and permanent residence and before we knew it, it seemed as though we were making San Francisco a more permanent home. This realization led to a desire to put down some roots, it also led to a reawakening within me and a desire to get back into practicing as a psychotherapist.

After a quick search with California’s Board of Behavioral Sciences [the institution that protects and serves Californians by setting, communicating, and enforcing standards for safe and competent mental health practice], it dawned on me that it would be easier for me to go back to school than it to wade through the bureaucracy of transferring my credentials to the US in order to get a license to practice again. With this realization I enrolled in a 3-year long MA in Integral Counseling Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies.

After three years of personal transformation, countless words read and written, deep reflective studies, ups, downs, twists, and turns today my degree will be conferred and I will graduate. 

Over 30 years ago when I left high school many people had their doubts that I would make anything of myself. I had been labeled a ‘troublemaker’ and a ‘yob’ by teachers, parents, and students. Today I am raising a toast to them. Thank you for putting fuel in my engine. While I am not taking relish in proving y’all wrong, I am glad you were wrong. 

I am also raising a toast to my friends who have been with me on this journey, who have scooped me up when I was falling apart, and who have egged me on when I had to write papers and all I really wanted to do was hang out with you, and to the colleagues who trusted me to be in full time study while I continued to work a full time job and, recently, establish and grow Soul Trained.

I couldn’t have done this without you. I also couldn’t have done this without me.

I’m practicing as a therapist again. For the last year I have been volunteering my time at Pacific Center for Human Growth, where I also serve as their Board President. Pacific Center is one of the USA’s oldest [established the year I was born] LGBTQIA2+ clinics which centers mental health as a social justice issue. In September I will also become a member of the Bay Area Gestalt Institute, a unique and diverse community of psychotherapists whose mission is to promote healing, aliveness, and authenticity by teaching and providing Gestalt Psychotherapy. You can check out my private practice site, here.

Advances in neuroscience have shown us that the human brain has the same capacity to learn in our 8th decade as it does in our 1st decade. As one of Soul Trained’s executive coaching clients, Dave Marsey, said in an interview I did with him recently, we are never a finished product. I couldn’t agree more.

I hope my graduation as a nearly-50-year-old, serves as a signal to you that It’s never too late to stop, start, or change. 

DDS. 

MA. NLPt. Cert Ed.